Objectives
The primary focus of my unit, as seen in the title, will be characterization. Although all of my students have worked with characterization throughout their elementary years, a significant jump happens from fifth to sixth grade in regards to the level at which they must process and evaluate the characters they encounter in reading. In the fifth grade, students must "examin[e] reasons for a character's actions, taking into account the situation and basic motivation of the character" (3). They must also "examine" the relationships the character develops with others as well as make inferences about the character. However, in sixth grade, students not only need to examine characters, their motivations, and their relationships, but also connect those to other concepts of literature. According to the Standard Course of Study for North Carolina, in sixth grade students need to interpret the effects of dialogue, sarcasm, point of view, mood, and tone as well as exploring the relationships the characters build in connection to other ideas, concepts and experiences (4). I find though that many of my students still have difficulties just explaining a character's motivation for a certain action, without even looking at other characters. The majority of my students look at me and question, "What is an inference?" If they graduate to sixth grade missing significant knowledge base with fifth grade concepts, I must then take on the task to build this foundation before progressing forward with more challenging types of exercises with character.
I have thus decided to break this unit up into six categories of character: Tone, Mood, Actions, Point of View, Thoughts, and Inferences. I will speak about each of these in relation to characterization below.
Tone
For the purpose of examining and evaluating characters, my working definition of tone will be the sound of the character's voice. This is different from the normal use of tone in the study of literature, which usually refers to the author's tone (for example, being satirical, sympathetic, or sarcastic). Rather, I want my students to decipher the tone each character uses. Does he or she speak quickly? Do they slur or articulate their words? What if the person speaking sounds dull or excited or enraged? All of these particular questions and their relative answers will describe some element of the character to us. I have found in the past that my students have very little trouble identifying the tone in someone else's voice; for example, one afternoon Christian said to me, "Wow Ms. DeLeeuw, you sound really excited today." They also have little trouble interpreting tone when watching or viewing something such as a TV show or movie. However, when it comes to their reading, tone takes on an entirely different dimension. Because tone deals with the sound of a character's voice (or thoughts, if an inner monologue happens), it is essential that the reader of the text be able to modulate his/her voice in relation to the type of tone being described in the reading. Due to my students' lower reading levels, they often mispronounce words, cannot define the meaning of certain words, and read in a monotone, somewhat stilted voice until they complete their turn of reading. Authors assist you with tone by using descriptive adjectives or action verbs or by using the correct punctuation; however, my students' interpretation of "Oh NO!" becomes "oh no." Because the tone a character uses in the text often shows a great deal of personality or motivation of a character, this will be one of the six concerns in our characterization unit.
Mood
My students often confuse tone and mood and inevitably mix them together. Mood differs from tone in that it deals with emotions and the elements of body language connected to that. Whereas tone simply refers to the sound of the voice, mood pulls together facial expressions, body language, and what the character says. I often relate this to the different moods a person can feel during the day. In practicing mood before we identify it in the text, I typically perform different moods for my students by changing my facial expression and the way I walk around the classroom. For example, I may drag my feet with downturned lips to imitate sadness or lethargy. My kids can always define the moods of their peers and themselves but have difficulty deciphering the mood of a particular character in a story. Similar to tone, mood is simply a matter of looking at the details. Did the character smile? And if so, does that mean he/she is happy or maybe nervous? Finding the mood of a character helps the reader to determine the character's overall personality and then draw conclusions about future episodes or events. If the character is always cranky when he/she first wakes up, then we can most likely assume he/she will be cranky tomorrow morning at 6 AM. Mood is about personality and the personality of a character will help my students analyze them in greater detail.
Actions
This is by far the easiest of the six elements involved with character. My students have little trouble determining or, for that matter, reciting the actions of a character in a text. The trouble comes when the students must predict what a character's actions may be in the future. For this I want my students, once again, to pay attention to the details. The actions of a character can tell you a great deal about their values, wants, and motivations. If a character throws a tantrum in the middle of a grocery store, we as the reader can infer several conclusions: that character wants something or needs something that he/she is not getting. Why does he/she want/need it? What makes him/her believe it is okay to throw a tantrum in a public place?
Actions also suggest the relationship characters have to other characters. Using the same example as before: the 5 year old throwing a tantrum in the store may not listen to his mother. Maybe the mother ignores him. What does that imply about the relationship they have with each other? Frequently, my students do not relate these minor details as exemplifying a character's personality and giving the reader clues into their relationships with other characters.
Point of View
Here is the Language Arts teacher's age—old question: From whose perspective is this story told? Whose point of view do we see here? Students tend to answer these questions correctly and quickly, but I want to take this task a step further. I want my students to explain why the author chose to put the story in that character's point of view. (In some stories, the point of view may be from an omniscient narrator, in which case my students would need to assess why the author chose a narrator rather than a character from the story.) Is their significance in having the story told in this perspective? Can you imagine how the story would be different if told from another character's point of view? My students should not only be able to explain what point of view is (the perspective from which the story is told), but also why this narration influences the story and how the story might change if written in a different perspective.
Thoughts
Many stories unfold from the character's perspective, allowing his or her thoughts to be quite noticeable. One can immediately "get into character" in such circumstances because the narrator allows you into his/her mind. However, when analyzing characters other than the narrator, the task challenges my students. I might ask "What do you think Sarah is thinking about when she did that?" and my students will give me blank expressions. Some will even look back in the book for evidence and when they do not find an immediate answer, they say casually, "I don't know." With thoughts, I do not want the "I don't Know." I want my students to constantly think as if they ARE the character. If you cannot get into the characters of your story, how will you be able to understand who they are or why they act the way they do? My students may at first challenge me on the character "mind—reading," but I think the end result will pay off when my students always have the ability to predict a character's thoughts based on his/her mood, actions, and relationship to other characters in the story.
Inferences
An inference draws a conclusion based on evidence explained in a text. Perhaps the best example of "inferencing" can be seen in shows such as CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) where agents use the clues of the crime scene to weave together facts about the case at hand. They use evidence in order to assume certain actions or reactions took place. The ability to make an inference requires some abstract thinking. In this regard, my students suffer greatly in making inferences. Renowned psychologist, Jean Piaget, described the levels of cognitive development into four groups. Research on his methods state, "at approximately twelve years, stage 4 of cognitive development termed formal operational thinking begins to develop . . around age twelve [adolescents] could develop abstract thinking, and this ability developed faster in some teens especially those who were more intelligent" (5). Piaget describes formal operational thinking as being able to think in the abstract, form hypotheses, determining all the possibilities of a given choice or situation, conceptual thinking, and understand problems in a more systematic way.
The difficulty, then, for my students lies in their cognitive development. To make an inference requires reading "in between the lines" or taking the words and phrases the author gives you to draw your own conclusions about a character. Many of my students are still in Level 3 of Piaget's development, meaning they see the world in a very concrete way. Being 11 or 12 years old, some of my students have the ability to automatically make generalizations and some do not. This aligns with the level of understanding in the North Carolina State Standards between fifth and sixth grade. While fifth graders only need "examine" characters and their actions, sixth graders must interpret the reasons behind their actions and the connections they have with other characters and experiences. Many of my students continue to develop this skill and level of cognitive development over the course of the school year, but it usually does not take effect until later in the year.
What do we do about this then? Once again, everything lies in the details. My students are definitely able to pick out concrete, stated details from the text in regard to a character's actions or thoughts or description. What then? Then comes the inferencing question: what does that really mean? If we know that Bobby lives in the country on a farm, what can we also infer about his character based on prior knowledge we have about farms or the country? Maybe we could infer that he wears clothes he does not mind getting dirty or that he probably handles animals well. The art of inferences rests in the connections between what you already know (activation of prior knowledge) and the facts the author gives you in the text.
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